Fido FAQ

Fido is a multi-threaded file watcher and action utility. It can watch one or more files for user defined patterns. When it finds a match, it can run a user defined program.

How Does It Work?

Fido works likes the UNIX command tail -f haha.log | grep something Since it’s multi-threaded, it can do this to several files at once. It can also match several different patterns. And once fido has a match, it issues a user defined command.

How do I know which pattern was matched?

Fido allows you to mark your regular expressions with a label. The label may contain all CAPS, NUMBERS and the ‘-‘ and ‘_’ characters followed by a colon. Here’s an example:

HAHA-01_A: .*My pattern.*

In this case, HAHA-01_A is the label. If fido matches .*My pattern.* in its watch file, it will send that as a argument to your action program. You can use that label in your script to key an event or simply as an identifier.